The &Uuml;bervirus

McAfee is reporting a form of devolution in malware, a resurgence of file infectors. According to the McAfee Avert Labs Blog, in the last year or so, W32/Bacalid, W32/Detnat and W32/Polip have all had successful runs out in the wild....

The hot new threat in this genre is W32/Virut. It hooks Windows APIs involved with running processes as part of its scheme to infect their files. It also connects back to a C&C server over IRC to take commands and downloads.

But the really interesting thing about W32/Virut is that it has embedded an excerpt of a poem by Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher:

O noon of life! O time to celebrate!
O summer garden!
Relentlessly happy and expectant, standing: -
Watching all day and night, for friends I wait:
Where are you, friends? Come! It is time! It's late!